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Wednesday, February 6, 2013

The Best Rebounders in NBA History: A New Perspective

When assessing the best rebounders in history, the typical method is to simply list who's totaled the most rebounds or perhaps rebounds per game. Obviously, there are problems with that. Guys with amazing longevity will collect huge totals for rebounds, not necessarily the best rebounders, and rebounds per game are controlled by playing time, pace and how many misses the other guys have (e.g. Wilt averaging a googolplex in the 60's.)

The next best method is to look at the percentage of available rebounds grabbed. I think this is actually more intuitive than total rebounds. What does 10 rebounds a game mean? Without context, it's meaningless, but saying Duncan grabbed 20% of the available rebounds yesterday is pretty self-explanatory. Since there are ten players on the court, he did the work of two men; hence, it's impressive.There's a problem with that, unfortunately. Offensive rebounds are distinct from defensive rebounds. It's not exactly fair to say someone is a worse rebounder when he plays at the top of the key, leaving him unable to grab more offensive rebounders like someone with no offensive who camps near the rim (hello, Reggie Evans.)

Instead I present the tables below of the best rebounders by career defensive rebounding percentage with a minimum minutes threshold of 7000 minutes. These are 22 individuals who have collected a quarter of all available defensive rebounds in their career. Isn't 7000 arbitrary? Yes, but pretty much every threshold used in NBA stats is. 7000 minutes is three seasons for a starter or a good chunk of a career for a role player like Fortson. I think 10,000 minutes might be a better limit, but lowering it to 7000 allows for some interesting guys worth of discussion. And unfortunately, seasons where defensive and offensive rebounds were not separated were not included.

Fortson and Evans played on the same team, each one battling each other at Rodman-esque prodigious rates on both sides of the floor. Roy Tarpley is somewhat forgotten, but he was fantastic at cleaning the glass. The big surprise? Bill Walton, even with his injuries is at the top of the list, followed by Swen Nater. And in an upset, Kevin Love has a slim lead for third over Rodman, whose presence on the offensive glass was otherwordly but on the defensive end he's "simply" very elite. It's an interesting cast, mixing notable big men like Duncan, Garnett and Mutombo with Gortat, Boozer and Dalembert. But there's no hiding under the rim on the offensive end here, and it doesn't matter how much you play; what matters is the rebounding.